1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the technical field of process management of a workflow environment on computer systems. More specifically, the present invention relates to an extension of a workflow environment and combining it with an object environment, both environments residing and being executable on a computer system.
2. Related Art
The process of designing, developing and manufacturing a new product and the process of changing or adapting an existing product presents many challenges to product managers and engineers to bring the product to market for the least cost and within schedule while maintaining or even increasing product quality. Many companies are realizing that the conventional product design process is not satisfactory to meet these needs. They require early involvement of manufacturing engineering, cost engineering, logistic planning, procurement, manufacturing, service and support with the design effort. Furthermore, they require planning and control of product data through design, release, and manufacturing.
The correct and efficient execution of business processes within a company, e.g. development or production processes, is of enormous importance for a company and has significant influence on company's overall success in the market place. Therefore, those processes have to be regarded similarly as technology processes and have to be tested, optimized and monitored. The management of such processes is usually performed and supported by a computer based process or workflow management system.
In D. J. Spoon: "Project Management Environment", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 9A, February 1990, pages 250 to 254, a process management environment is described including an operating environment, data elements, and application functions and processes.
In R. T. Marshak: "IBM's FLOWMARK, Object Oriented Workflow for Mission Critical Applications", Workgroup Computing Report (USA), Vol. 17, No. 5, 1994, page 3 to 13, the object character of a product of International Business Machines Corporation called IBM FLOWMARK as a client/server product built on a true object model that is targeted for mission critical production process application development and deployment is described.
In H. A. Inniss and J. H. Sheridan: "Workflow Management Based on an Object Oriented Paradigm", IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 3, March 1994, page 185, other aspects of object oriented modeling on customization and changes are described.
In F. Leymann and D. Roller: "Business Process Management with FLOWMARK", Digest of papers, Cat. No. 94CH3414-0, Spring COMPCON 94, 1994, pages 230 to 234, the state of the art computer process management tool IBM FLOWMARK is described. The meta model of IBM FLOWMARK is presented as well as the implementation of IBM FLOWMARK. The possibilities of IBM FLOWMARK for modeling of business processes as well as their execution are discussed. The product IBM FLOWMARK is available for different computer platforms and documentation for IBM FLOWMARK is available from International Business Machines Corporation.
In F. Leymann: "A meta model to support the modeling and execution of processes", Proceedings of the 11th European Meeting on Cybernetics and System Research EMCR92, Vienna, Austria, Apr. 21 to 24, 1992, World Scientific 1992, pages 287 to 294, a meta model for controlling business processes is presented and discussed in detail.
The "IBM FLOWMARK for OS/2", document number GH 19-8215-01, IBM Corporation, 1994, available from International Business Machines Corporation and herein incorporated by reference, represents a typical modem, sophisticated, and powerful workflow management system. It supports the modeling of business processes as a network of activities. This network of activities, the process model, is constructed as a directed, acyclic, weighted, colored graph. The nodes of the graph represent the activities which are performed. The edges of the graph, the control connectors, describe the potential sequence of execution of the activities. Definition of the process graph is via the IBM FLOWMARK Definition Language (FDL) or the built-in graphical editor. The runtime component of the workflow manager interprets the process graph and distributes the execution of activities to the right person at the right place, e.g., by assigning tasks to a work list according to the respective person, wherein the work list is stored as digital data within the workflow or process management computer system.
In F. Leymann and W. Altenhuber: "Managing business processes as an information resource", IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 32(2), 1994, the mathematical theory underlying the IBM FLOWMARK product is described.
In D. Roller: "Verifikation von Workflows in IBM FLOWMARK", in J. Becker und G. Vossen (Hrsg.): "Geschaeftsprozessmodellierung und Workflows", International Thompson Publishing, 1995, the requirement and possibility of the verification of workflows is described. Furthermore, the feature of graphical animation for verification of the process logic is presented as it is implemented within the IBM FLOWMARK product.
For implementing a computer based process management system, firstly the business processes have to be analyzed and, as the result of this analysis, a process model has to be constructed as a network of activities corresponding to the business process. In the IBM FLOWMARK product, the process models are not transformed into an executable. At run time, an instance of the process is created from the process model, called a process instance. This process instance is then interpreted dynamically by the IBM FLOWMARK product.
A previous patent application of the same applicant, application number PCT/EP 95/03345, titled "Method and Computer System for Generating Process Management Computer Programs from Process Models", teaches how a process graph can be transformed into a C++ program, if the process is executed by one user at one time at one place consecutively.
The technological area of object environments has become known, for instance, by the Common Object Request Broker (CORBA) standard of the Object Management Group (OMG). Detailed information on CORBA can be found in "The Common Object Request Broker: Architecture and Specifications", OMG Document Number 91.12.1, Revision 1.1. CORBA is part of a larger object architecture outlined in OMG's Object Management Architecture (OMA) Guide. Details on the OMA may be found in the Object Management Architecture (OMA) Guide Revision 2.0, Second Edition, Sep. 1, 1992, OMG TC Document 92.11.1. With respect to CORBA various implementations and extensions of this standard are commercially available such as IBM's System Object Model (SOM). Of course other object environments are or might be part of the state of the art even though not conforming with the CORBA standard.